This is the editing forum, and I’m not editing anything. But you asked about documentation ? Here are some ideas:
(DISCLAIMER: I’m coming from RTCW competition, so I may be biased in some areas.)
(DISCLAIMER2: Long post warning)
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Document new commands: I spent an hour last night trying to figure out how to switch from a medic with amimbo lugers to a field ops without using the limbo menu and still retain my akimbo lugers to no avail. “team r 3” or “team r 3 3” makes me an axis field ops with a single luger even if I could choose to have two (by the way, why is that not the default – who would take a single luger while two are available ?). I know you people want us to use the limbo menu, but in competition we really won’t go to that menu unless we really have to.
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Needed for competitive play: Connection/Visual Tweaks. There is an ongoing debate now at its 7th page on planetwolfenstein forums about competition settings. In competition people want to maintain 76 fps at all times throughout a map so that:
a) They can perform any trick jump needed
b) They don’t want to lose a one-on-one fight just because they had a drop in framerate at a very crucial moment.
While trying to achieve that, they are willing to upgrade computers or lower gfx quality settings. However, other players get uneasy about someone else reducing texture quality. I haven’t tried to see what grass looks like at lower detail, if it’s more or less revealing or not. There are a lot of people uninformed about monitor gamma and they complain about other people’s gamma settings, claiming gamma makes things look ‘brighter’ and reveal more detail.
Similarly, there are network connection settings such as cl_maxpackets and cl_timenudge that have been accessible to Q3 and RTCW players, but without a formal explanation. Casual pub players might not care about these things but competitive players know all about the existance of these settings, they just don’t know exactly what they do (e.g., why does the game display my ping higher when I crank up cl_maxpackets ? I receive snapshots equally well, why am I considered more lagged ?). Before I forget, Antilag is a GUI option in the host-server menu. You need to explain at least that.
Therefore, it would be very nice of you people if you could state what settings can be regulated to provide an even playground, and what can not, so that we all know, and what are acceptable values.
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Either take out commands such as “tell_attacker”, etc. out, or state that they are useless at the very least.
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OSP is included in ET but OSP for RTCW has been at version 0.8x for a while now, and it’s not bug free in ET either (as you can tell from the end-round stats screen sometimes). Moreover, people find exploits every now and then, and unless that exploit is squashed at the very moment (punkbuster can do only so much), fair play cannot exist (in pubs or in competitions). From what I read, you’re not planning on releasing any source code (which I understand, due to Q3 licensing), but by doing that you’re also telling us that if something nasty happens, we can’t do anything about it until Splashdamage fixes it themselves. You sound like “no more maps, we’re done with ET, about to move on”. (I know it’s a free game; it’s just nice to know what one can expect.)
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As a covert ops, “weaponbank 2” twice will take the silencer off. I could take the silencer off with “weapalt” as well. And the medic needs some other way to pull adrenaline syringe. (oops this is not documentation related, but keyboard layout is getting messier with the additions of +prone, binocs binds for every class, fireteam binds, map and compass binds, more spawn binds – I need to grow more fingers or plug a USB2.0 cable straight into my right wrist).
I didn’t want this post to be much longer so I left out some detail. If you want, reply a follow-up and I can provide more detail.
[u]Korollary
http://teamuprise.com
Some of the GTK dev team already work for SD.